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Album Review:
TBA

Monday, April 22, 2013

Album Review: Across Tundras/Lark’s Tongue – Split LP

All too often, partnerships on split records can often conflict
creating as much disharmony as complementary noises. That’s not always a
bad thing, as the range of contradicting, experimental connections
inside can often portray an intriguing and more complete whole. In this
instance, however, there is plenty of concord and, consequently, plenty
of opportunity for further exploration. Combined, these two have even
managed to play inside the pentagonal borders of what we, the press,
might refer to as grunge, shoegaze, drone, post-metal and stoner.

This blissed-out middle-ground is first marked out by the
wonderfully-titled Across Tundras, a trio hailing from Tennessee who
Cavity Records have described as both “vintage psychedelia” and
“panoramic country crush”. The track “Low Haunts”, propped up by an
anarchic four-and-a-half minute warbling wash of pedal effects (rather
like an orchestra clearing its throat) steps up with a lush, organic
kind of Americana that warms the very cockles of your heart. If The
Rolling Stones ate mushrooms and space-cake instead of snorting all that
coke and speed, they’d have sounded pretty much like this. Hell they
even say it themselves. Interesting, then, that the line “Like a rolling
stone” pops up in “Crux To Bea” which throws more chugging groove into
the mix enabling them to drift into grittier corners. Never static, they
eventually tumble into an effusive style of stripped-back, heavy-lidded
blues that echo artists like Dan Auberbach and Dead Confederate.

Completing the morphing progression, Illinois-dwelling Lark’s Tongue
(their moniker clearly paying homage to King Crimson) head deeper into
the cosmos to haul down a droning wall-of-sound backdrop à la Hawkind
into which they weave a tapestry of lush melodies à la Slowdive. Haul on
the volume for the book-ending chorus of “Follow Your Night” to fully
appreciate the obliterating crush and then drop out for complete
immersion as the LP’s highlight, “Aluminium”, kicks in. The vocal
harmonies locked within are stunningly beautiful and meld serenely into
the thunderous riffage that rains down upon the listener.

As a split four-tracker this may, on the face of it, seem like a
frivolous purchase, but at 33 minutes it offers pretty good value for
money. Honestly, you’d be hard-pressed to find another split as
thematically-explorative, emotionally dense and gloriously satisfying as
this one.